Saturday, April 17, 2010

The plot thickens in this IDW sequel to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen as the Autobot/Human task force, NEST, is in danger of being shut down in the wake of the Decepticon attack on the pertrochemical facility from last issue. The still-mysterious group of humans known as Project Nefarious continue their plans, apparently to regrow the All Spark for their own purposes. Meanwhile, Soundwave and his agents come closer to uncovering the conspiracy.

Soundwave again takes center stage in this issue, as the de facto leader of the Decepticons on Earth in the wake of Megatron and Starscream's departure at the end of Revenge of the Fallen while the Autobots struggle with their fragile human alliance. The storyline about the American government's hesitation about working with the Autobots continues here. Soundwave finally touches down on Earth, to tangle with the Autobots and will either be their prisoner or ally.

This episode features some new movie-verse characters and some that we have already seen. It is nice to see that they are getting some use of out Sideswipe and he is very much a vain and impulsive young Autobot in the tradition of Sunstreaker, Hot Rod, and Cheetor. So even if he is not directly based on his G1 namesake, he at least feels like a Transformers character. I was slightly confused by the appearance of what looks like Sideways on page 10. I hope the comics are not getting into the movie's habit of casually resurrecting deceased characters. I was also disappointed to see that Soundwave had not adopted an terrestrial alt mode. I was hoping to see the truck alt mode that was rumored to have been scrapped from the movie. I am also not a fan of how his dialogue was written in this movie. Soundwave should always speak simply and directly, preferably as little as possibe, instead of the rather arch way he is written here. This is also true of Dirt Boss' little personal manifesto on 16/17. Characters shouldn't be talking about their motivations in the middle of a fight.

Transformers: Nafarious #2 continues and builds on the solid setup from Issue 1. The story seems to be moving towards an interesting alliance between the Autobots and Soundwave's Decepticons to find and destroy the people behind Project Nefarious. There are a few missteps but Nefarious is actually telling a compelling story in the movie universe.